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Thoughts about economic and business issues by and for the NYU Stern community -- and others with similar interests. The content reflects the views of individual NYU faculty but not necessarily those of NYU. Comments and suggestions welcome. Special thanks to our tech consultant, MBA alum Tim Reilly.

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SodaStream censored?

February 2, 2014

I should have known better. Yesterday I ran across a piece suggesting that SodaStream was forced by Fox (the broadcaster) to take a reference to Coke and Pepsi out of its Super Bowl ad. Since references to competing products are commonplace, that seems unjust, right?

I don’t know what Fox’s logic is, but my marketing consultant, Priya, tells me SodaStream is doing this on purpose to drum up attention. Why would she think that? For one, it’s working: the (“uncensored”) ad now has almost 9 million views on YouTube. For another, they did the same thing last year. As they say in the Guinness ads: Brilliant! I’m now trying to figure out how to get Paul Krugman to attack me.